Bethesda First Baptist Church, Bethesda, MD, Sept. 5, 2004
Everybody needs, from time to time, a fresh start. No matter who you are, no matter where you have been, no matter what you have done, sometimes you just need a fresh start. Trying to fix things the way they are doesn’t work; there are times when you must start all over from the beginning.
Several years ago my wife asked me to build some cabinets in our basement. The job looked like a piece of cake. There was a nice open space at one end of the room, and all I had to do was build some kind of frame, put a counter top on it, make some shelves over here on the left side and some more over here on the right side, and then put cabinet doors on the front. Easy, right? No problem, done in a flash, right?
Wrong! Wrong! What I haven’t told you is that first, I had to deal with a window in that wall. The window was up high, too small, she said, and so, while you are building these cabinets, could you also enlarge the window? And, oh yes, when you get the window enlarged, how about bookshelves on either side, from the counter to the ceiling?
Now have you got the picture? I am standing in front of a blank wall of concrete blocks, with one little narrow window up here, and nothing else. Open up that window, build the cabinets down here, build the shelves over here, over there.
Well, I started. But, brothers and sisters, I started in the wrong place. I started with the cabinet down on the floor. Why? Because I wanted quick results. So I started with the thing I thought I could do right away. I built a frame, put some siding on it, laid the counter top out, all so that I could step back and say, “Look what I did!” I wanted the boss – I mean the wife – to applaud and say, “What a good husband I’ve got.” I like the goodies! I like making something happen, something I can see, something others tell me I’m doing well. I went for quick results.
But there is a whole lot more to the story. After I got the basic cabinet built and the counter top laid, then I decided to start on opening up that window. I knew what I would have to do. Those were concrete blocks, so I would have to take out the old window frame, knock out a couple of rows of block, and build a new frame for the larger window. I got my sledge hammer and prepared to hammer on that wall. I knew that would be fun! Tearing things down is always fun. But that’s another sermon.
Guess what? I had already built the cabinet and the counter out here, but I was supposed to hammer up there. I couldn’t reach it. I couldn’t get to the place I was supposed to hit, and even if I did, I was going to trash my new cabinet with broken concrete! I had gone at things in the wrong order, and so I messed myself up. I would have to take apart the cabinet I had so laboriously built, so that I could open up the window.
Now you think you see where this story is headed. But the story isn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
I finally did, by hook and by crook, break out the block, build a window frame, and then went running off to the glass shop to buy a large piece of double strength window glass. Now if you were going to get a piece of glass for a window, what would you need to know? The size of the opening! You would need to measure, wouldn’t you? Well, duh. I said, “Oh, they will know how big it should be. Four rows of blocks this way, four blocks that way, they’ll know. And the guy at the glass shop said he did know. He cut it, I paid for it, I brought it home, I went to put it in – what do you think? You are way ahead of me. It was too small, about three inches short! Nothing to do but trudge sheepishly back to the glass shop, this time with measurements in hand, and buy another big, expensive piece of glass.
What did I need? I needed a fresh start. I had made so many mistakes that each mistake was causing another mistake. I needed a fresh start. Finally I had to tear out quite a bit of my cabinet work and start all over again. Just fixing up what I had wasn’t good enough. I needed what? A fresh start.
Brothers and sisters, is it time in your life for a fresh start? Is it time in the life of your church for something new? Is it, in the providence of God, the moment when you need to go back to the beginning and quit messing around with what you’ve done in the past, and start over?
Jesus said to the man named Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” You need a fresh start. Nick, it’s not working for you, is it? And it’s not working because you keep trying to tinker with what you’ve got. But you can’t fix it just tinkering with what you’ve got. You need a fresh start. You need a new life. You must be born again.
Naturally Nicodemus was puzzled by this. He told Jesus he didn’t get it. “How can anybody be born again? I can’t go back to my mother and be a baby again. How can I get a fresh start?”
How can a church get a fresh start? How can a congregation of God’s people, with years of history behind them, clearly in need of a new direction, get a fresh start? A church, too, must be born again. Let’s think about this.
I
Some of us think that if we feel guilty enough that will be a fresh start. Some of us think that if we dwell on our mistakes and brood about them and tell ourselves how much of a mess we are, that will start us on the right road.
But, you know, just feeling bad about yourself is not enough. Guilt is not a productive emotion. Guilt does not move anybody to do anything positive. Guilt cripples. Guilt and shame eat at us and hold us back. The gospel is more than guilt. And the life of the church is more than blaming ourselves for the blunders of the past.
You know, when I found that I was way off base in my construction project, I felt like sitting in the corner and sulking over the mess in my basement. Truth to tell, I wanted to kick the broken blocks and use, let us say, some theological language on that counter top! I felt like weeping over those torn up cabinets. But when I had had a good sulk and I had exhausted my spiritual vocabulary, how much had changed in my basement? How much had been accomplished? Nothing. Precisely nothing. Guilt does not get it done.
It’s not enough just to feel bad about yourself. You do not get a fresh start just from feeling you are a failure. Guilt produces nothing but more guilt; and shame brings no fruit except additional shame. If this church is to be born again, it will not be rebirthed out of your feeling guilty. It will not be given new life if you are full of death wishes. If this church is to be born again, it will find its new life, its fresh start, in the power of the one who is able to make all things new. All things new. The starting place for your renewal is not in your guilt, not in your shame, not in your past. The starting point for renewal is in faith, faith that the Lord who gave you life in the first place is able still to bring new life.
Our Christ does not desire the death of any church. He is not served by people who wallow in guilt. New life can begin when you, each and several, claim the gift of forgiveness, you walk away from the mistakes of the past, and you let Him tale charge. A fresh, clean, start. You must be born again.
II
But then, on the other side of the ledger, some of us have decided that it’s not our fault that we are where we are. Some of us have determined that we are not to blame. It’s somebody else’s fault. Somebody else failed. We look at our lives and our church and suppose we are not what we ought to be because somebody failed us.
We have a thousand theories to explain our failures, don’t we? There was a father who wasn’t home, and so we don’t know how to do family. There was a boss who was a racist, and so we were held back from advancement. There was a teacher who didn’t care, and so we didn’t learn. Somebody else ruined our lives!
We look for folks we can blame, and use the shortcomings of others as the excuse for not being what we could be. There was a spouse who was unfaithful, there was a drug pusher who got us hooked, there was a drinking buddy who didn’t know when to stop, there was .. well, you name it. We spend a lot of time and energy blaming the people in our past for failing us.
But I ask you: does anything change simply because you figure out that somebody did you wrong? Have you solved anything by establishing that? Will merely believing that somebody “done you wrong” make anything right? Will that give you a fresh start? But they did. It will not. It will not.
You see, when I messed up that basement, who did that? Oh, I didn’t really do that, now, did I? My wife did that. She asked me to build all that stuff, and if she had never asked me to do the work I never would have made the mess, right? Just like in the Bible, when Adam and Eve sinned, and God caught up with them, Adam said, “Lord, it’s not my fault. It’s the woman you gave me, she made me do it. It’s her fault. And frankly, Lord, it’s your fault, because if you hadn’t put her here in the first place ... “
Brothers and sisters, just as feeling guilty is completely unproductive, so also assigning blame is totally pointless. It is of no value at this juncture in your life, or in your church’s life, to point back to this person or that person and blame. There is no fresh start if you do nothing more than analyze who-done-it. Leave the detective work to others; leave the blame game alone. And focus on this one thing – you must be born again. You must get a fresh start.
It’s not about what others have done. It’s about what the Lord of the church wants to do. He wants to give you a fresh start. Guilt won’t get you there; blame won’t get you there.III
So – if I cannot get a fresh start by feeling guilty; and if I cannot get a fresh start by blaming others, where can I get a fresh start? Jesus said, “You must be born again.” How is that going to happen? Where is that coming from?
When I did that basement job of mine, I found out some things. I found out, first, that I didn’t know enough. I didn’t have all the skills I needed to do that carpentry and glasswork. I felt like sitting down in the floor and blaming myself, guilty all over the place. But that wouldn’t have helped solve the problem.
When I did that basement job of mine, I found out, too, that I needed encouragement. I needed support. I needed to have somebody affirm that, despite all my blunders, I was trustworthy. I needed to know that somebody cared, even though I had done a good deal of damage. Blame would not have solved the problem.
Because, you see, fresh starts come from down here. Fresh starts come from inside. Fresh starts come from being born again. Fresh starts mean a new you, and not just the old you dressed up in a new suit. Fresh starts mean a new person, and not just the old person spruced up. Fresh starts might even mean a whole new church, and not just the old church with a new face at the front on Sunday mornings. A fresh start is a whole new you.
When I did that basement job of mine, I found out neither guilt nor blame would solve the problem. And yet I also knew I could not live with that mess one more day. I could not have that pile of rubble in my house one more night. What I needed was a friend; I needed an expert. I needed somebody to help me do what I could not do for myself. I needed a friend, a really good friend.
If you were in my basement today, you wouldn’t know that it had ever been such a mess. It looks quite good today. But I didn’t do all of that. I didn’t make it right, all on my own. I had help. One day, I just gave up and had a real carpenter come in and make it right. I had a real carpenter take over and straighten out my amateur mess. He had the tools, he had the skills, and most of all, he cared about my house, cared enough to get it right. I brought in a real carpenter.
I know a carpenter for you too. I know a carpenter who will teach you to be workmen who do not need to be ashamed. I know a carpenter who will give you a fresh start. Not just fix the mistakes and not just erase the past and not even just give you new skills. I know someone who will take the mess and make it right. A fresh start. Born again.
For I know a carpenter who bears the mark of nails in His hands. I know a carpenter who carries the scars of a sword in His side. I know a carpenter who climbed up on a cruel cross, flung against an eastern sky, and cried out, “Come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest.” I know a carpenter who opened up the very windows of heaven and let light stream in.
His name is Jesus. He said, “You must be born again.” You MUST be. And then He said, “God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that whoever trusts Him – trusts Him – would not die, but would have everlasting life.”
Jesus the Christ, the carpenter of Nazareth, the artisan of Calvary, who broke open a wide window on the third day – trust Him. Follow Him. Be open to Him. Obey Him. He wants to give you new life. He wants to give your church a new birth. He is able to give you a fresh start, and even better, He is able to give you everlasting life.
